Former Work

In front of Ford Field (the large covered structure on the right) is a brick building. That buidling is in Brewery Park - the former location of Stroh's Brewery, where my maternal grandfather worked many years ago. If you care to learn more about Detroit's brewery history, tours are offered.

Correction

My mother informed me she had a photo of the desk from before we began refinishing it.

Work.

Spent the last couple weeks refinishing this desk.



My mom stripped the desk then left it for me to stain, shellac, and put back together. In the mean time she painted this room and bought those curtains that i would later hang.







Inspired by the Costa Rican cart we were given a number of years ago, and by the skin colour variance in my family, i stained the wood 3 different colours. I also hand-sanded all the original screws to remove all the nicks and the old yellow stain (unfortunately we do not have a photo of the desk before it was refinished).



All that's missing is a little girl drawing little pictures at this little desk.

Raw

The way i remember the story, on the way home from the beach, my father spotted some fishermen in a small boat, hauling a shark onto shore. He stopped the car, walked over to them, and, not speaking the language, bargained with them for the shark's jaws.

I doubt that's a 100% accurate rendition.



We've had those jaws in our family ever since that time in Somalia, some 30 years ago, and they remind me of the rawness of overseas living. I now have them at home, and i now also carry a permanent reminder of that rawness.



This weekend also marks the end of my Stats class. I took 80 minutes (out of 240 allowed) to get an 89% on the final exam. I think i finished the class with a low A.

I set out with two criteria for this class: watch none of the dvd lectures (it's an online class - all lectures are provided on a set of 6 dvds), and no use of the special features of the fancy calculator that was marked as a requirement for each homework, quiz and test. I even managed to go the first couple weeks without using any calculator, after which i grew tired of long division (not to mention square roots) and started using perl for nothing more complex than sqrt().

Now that i'm done with the class, i plan on watching the dvd lectures; maybe the material will start to make sense.



Taking closeups of one's own arm (these 3 are full frame) is a little tedious and best not done in a hurry; pardon the imperfections.

Loss

That's me and my parents watching Ohio State lose another National Championship. My parents are in the laptop, watching from Peru via Skype (game wasn't on tv there, too much real football on Sundays (and for legal purposes, this paragraph is a fantasy)). Somehow i managed to make this photo into quite an autobiographical statement - knife, boots, beer, random boxen.

Where do the children play?

Monday, 4am. 6 more hours of work and i've done my 40 hours for the week. But as before, i'll put in at least 40 more over the next 5 days. What is this? I can do 70 hours of work in 3 days, but ask me to read a textbook chapter for a class and i'll have it done in a month, maybe.

When we were much younger, my brother and i used to play a game with small soldiers and a marble. Each set up a series of soldiers, then rolled the marble to knock down the other's army; killing was so easy. Why can't i remember any other games we played together?

I've been thinking through my vacation plans for next month. The problems i had in June keep coming back: i'll lose so much money, going on vacation, is it worth it? Time enough to relax in the grave, to paraphrase the Great One.

But for now it's put-up-or-shut-up time: 4:30am, and still that one script to write. You know the one: once written, it'll either cost them a few million bucks, or go unnoticed by all but 2 or 3 people. Irregardless, it needs to be written, and instead i'm busy blogging.


In final, completely unrelated news, i've nominated a friend for sysadmin of the year in what is sure to be their most rambling, incoherent entry.

I Say Go

I say hello, and how are you, just as i learned on my last vacation. The standard brief babbling, then she says, "we are so blessed, this life, it's a blessing, and so often we don't even realise it."

I assume she's a religious fanatic - who quips such nonsense when selling coffee? A nervous twittering in my mind, we end in some simplistic comments, "hopefully you'll still feel that way at the end of the day."

Religious fanatics - a quarter block away, they sometimes gather to yell at us all, saving our souls by screaming of the glory of their god, but only when the weather's nice; on those -20 days, as i cycle by that corner on my way to work, they're not to be seen, back in their caves? What is the standard hibernation period of a righteous freak?

Exit the cafe, past the corner, on to the park on the way to work. It always is quite a day through the park, never know what birds i'll see, how many snakes, or snails, count the rabbits, perhaps a fox, some deer, sparkling white snow, deep puddles of rain, singing ice, sometimes a challenging rain. It is quite nice, yes, perhaps even a blessing, just to go to work.

I'm reminded of my father's words, the first time he visited MI after he started working in Iraq (in 1994): "it is so peaceful here." I wonder, perhaps she knows a little more, perhaps she simply meant it as an expression of truth.

Heat

It's hotter here that it was in Africa, but that's not the kind of heat i'm referring to.

I returned to a number of issues at work. Some problems new, spontaneous - who knows why they appeared, perhaps just to welcome me back. Other problems there while i was away, asked to give them to others, instead left to greet me, and only mentioned at 4pm Friday, please note you need to have it done by the weekend. Nice to come back to overtime, work through the weekend, get about 1 hour of sleep and crawl to my mom's for some food.

Flight

Uganda, June 5, 2007. I bought my ticket over the weekend.

No, i'm not going due to watching a recent film about the place; i'd heard of Idi Amin before even watching Mississippi Masala. I'm going because i want to get back to Africa.

My current plan is to circle Lake Victoria counter-clockwise. I've a contact in Uganda thanks to my boss, an Ugandan immigrant. From there i'll travel to the border with DRoC, peer across, and wonder where that last great cryptozoological creature is, let him know i'll catch up to him soon enough. South to Rwanda, witness the river in that country. East to one of the tourist hotspots, look at a nice crater. North, but not too far north, not too far east, or i'd be back where i started. But to Kenya nonetheless; i used to have some friends from there, still have a spearhead she gave me. And back across the river, maybe do some white-water rafting (if you're gonna do it for the first time, might as well be at the source of the Nile, eh?), maybe fish some Nile perch, maybe just enjoy the land. At least that's the current plan - it will probably change substaintially once my feet touch African soil again.

And don't worry, i've already told my brother what to do with the life insurance money (yes, WCC gets a scholarship in my name, to support those who travel - now i really gotta watch my back, everyone's gonna want me dead).

It should be a great trip. Maybe when i get back, if the ceiling mural is done, i'll finally have that house-warming party.

Rivers of Sweat

Haven't stopped sweating since i got home 5 hours ago. I haven't lived with A/C for about 4 years now, so it's not that big a deal. Besides, when it gets real bad, i resort to my abuelito's technique. He used to live in the Chicago ghetto, also sans A/C, and when it was very hot out, he would take a stack of t-shirts and put them in the freezer. Every 10-15 minutes he would take one out, put it on, and put the one he was wearing back in the freezer. If you're used to A/C then you probably won't find it so refreshing, but if you're not then it's quite a treat.

It was so nice and hot out on the ride home that i stopped at various points along the river just to take it easy and enjoy the sun. Looking at the birds and the fish and the turtles, i wondered that thought again: how long until they evolve to mimic trash - until the fish have the coke logo patterned on their bellies, the turtle's shell looks like a budweiser can, and the crane's eyes are shaped like bottlecaps? And once they have evolved to that point, if i take a photo of the budweiser-turtle, and print that photo for money, will i get sued by budweiser for copyright violation?

Rome, 2006

Frank and i went biking some 50+ km through the countryside by Frankfurt. We covered all kinds of terrain and were quite exhausted afterwards, and running so late that we missed all but Brazil's last goal. The France-Korea match was rather nice to watch, though - we sat surrounded by a bunch of Koreans cheering "De Ha Mingu" (sp?) among other things, and their enthusiam was wonderful.

Got home at around 1am, which left 30 minutes to pack and make it to the train stop to catch the 30 minute train back into Frankfurt (which i just made, thanks Frank!), where i waited about 35 minutes for a 2 hour bus ride to the Hahn airport, for the 2 hour flight to Rome, Ciampino, and took a 1 hour bus to catch the 30 minute metro ride to Termini, the central train station. Been up for a while now, but i'm right close to Termini in the same internet cafe that i always go to in Rome. I don't think the employee recognizes me, but i recognizes her, she's the same Peruvian woman who was working here before.

Now I'm off to wander around Rome, again. Probably nothing too fancy, like the Vatican or the Colloseum, but something less dramatic like the outskirts, to see all the crazy apartment buildings they have there.

I've a lot of older posts i should make, but don't have the time right now. Look for old posts later on, i have to backdate a bunch of them.

birthday party

My mom's wanted a new cuckoo clock for quite some years, so as she's close to der Schwarzwald (where cuckoo clocks are made) now's her chance to get one. Siegfried drove us to the area, with Heinz (who says he needed a new head after last night) coming along as a translator. While there, we saw what claims to be the largest cuckoo clock in the world cuckoo at 2pm. Think i got it on video too.

Afterwards we walked around the largest waterfalls in Germany as well as through some other small towns in the area. On each small town's central plaza is an area where a large screen has been set up. When a football game is on, the plaza fills up with people coming to watch it on the big screen and enjoy the many shops set up around it. Also, the town buildings are lined with German and other flags. I've heard various Europeans say how strange it is to see U.S. streets lined with U.S. flags, but the World Cup changes everything, being partiotic takes on a new meaning. It's a wonderfully festive time town throughout the country.


We returned around supper time and Dorle made me some good vegan fried rice with tofu, and i was told that Rebecca had invited me to a party to celebrate her and a cousin's recent birthdays. The party was a gathering of 30 or so locals in their 20's, along with a lot of local beers and buckets of sangria with long straws in it.

It was a great party, and luckily for me plenty of people spoke some degree of English and spoke with me throughout the night. At times everyone started speaking German (or Schwabian (sp?), to be exact) but i just sat back and enjoyed the interpersonal interactions.

Ended up getting home around 3:30-4am, another well-worth it long night.

Just like the ketchup

6:30am taxi to Chinggis Khaan Airport. 3 hour wait, then 6 hours aboard an Aeroflot Russian airplane with very small seats and the largest bathroom i've ever seen on a plane. 5 hour wait in Moscow airport, a dingy little place with poor organization. 3 hour flight to Frankfurt and my father greets me holding a bag of clothes. Frank is around the corner and Siegfried's outside fretting over the car. Franks bids goodbye (for now) and we head off to Backnang.

2 days ago i was racing across the Gobi Desert at 40 kmph listening to Cloud Nine Music; now i am racing on the Autobahn at 200+ kmph listening to an automated German voice giving directions.

Heinz is a jolly old man having a family gathering. I meet a plethora of people that i met 25 years ago but do not remember, and i meet Rebecca, a cousin (almost everyone here is a cousin of mine, to some degree) who was only in her mother's womb when we were last in Germany.

Many beers later i am (at my mother's request) drunkeningly explaining all the photos and people in my mom's photo album to Rebecca. Eventually everyone heads off, and we get driven to Siegfried's.

California CA

"Fourth quarter, 82 76, Pistons." [crowd cheers]
The pilot was nice enough to read us the score once a quarter, though no true fan would have been flying last night, and no one should have doubted the outcome.

It's a little nice to be gone; the moment i stepped on the plane, all my fears and apprehensions dissipated. I'm no longer worried about what i'll do for a place to stay, where i'll eat, what i'll do, how i'll get home. Those are now problems to solve, not problems to worry about, and as such i am sure i will solve them.

My niece had a little flag for me - a small sign that read "I [heart] [photo of me looking goofy]", topped by a small heart balloon. I think that's the first time i've gotten off the plane to be greeted by someone with a sign.

Family Bonds

A few weeks ago i started using Instant Messaging in order to ease communication with some co-workers. I've since expanded to include some friends, and i have accounts via AIM, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo in order to accomodate everyone else's pre-existing company of choice. I had avoided IM for years due to its more synchronous, wide-scale nature, but figured a change was in order.

A few days ago a co-worker sends me this message: good morning :). No one at work talks to me about non-work related things, so i waited for this co-worker to send me the problem that needed solved. Three minutes later, Rex asks me if i'm logged in, because the other co-worker had messaged him that i hadn't responded. I told him i hadn't responded because i hadn't been asked anything, which Rex forwards on to the co-worker, and i get the following message from that co-worker: i hear i dont know frisco aim protocol... rex is fixing it for me :).

Language is a tricky subject for me and daily i feel uncomfortable with English, despite it's being my first language. Phrases like don't look a gift horse in the mouth are strange to me and make me pause to ponder their ramifications (the Trojan Horse was a gifted horse, had the Trojans looked in its mouth perhaps Troy would not have been lost, so is the phrase deceitful in nature?). I generally try to focus on a person's questions and actions, at least at work.

Ok, it's not really language, but the way a particular culture uses its language - i haven't been immersed in any culture long enough to fully learn its language nuances. While this has a (sometimes delightful, sometimes annoying) side-effect of giving me a distinct voice of my own, its main effect seems to be distancing me from the rest of society.

I realise this situation is made more unique by my own history, that my history is shared by only a few people, and as such i can depend on one and only one person to truly understand the ramifications of someone saying good morning :) to me, from what the hell do they want? to crap, i should respond, what is appropriate? and all the hrm, 3 o's in that one in between.
That one person is my brother.

Reasons for Travelling

Travelled from Prague to Krakow by train last night; arrived at 5:30am and spent the dawn walking around the city centre. The snow i missed in Michigan greeted me in Krakow, and the parks and old churches here look quite nice in the morning light. Still, after a couple hours of walking and photographing, i was a bit cold.

In Prague i was fortunate enough to meet Pam, an old friend, who happens to be teaching English there. I stayed the first few nights in a hotel, but once i reached Pam i spent a couple nights on her couch.

Sometimes i wonder why i travel, what the point is, what there is to see, to experience.
Pam was arguing about the differences between digital and analog photography, mostly that digital is evil, an argument highlighted by the demise of her digital camera. I asked to take a look at her camera - the problem was that four of the pins in the compact flash slot were bent so as to not make contact with the card, thus disabling the camera. A couple small flathead screwdrivers or some extreme needlenose pliers would fix the problem, but unfortunately those were not available. Instead i used scissors (taken apart using a larger screwdriver), a bent paperclip (custom bent for the job), a wobbly knife, and my handy flashlight. After a little over an hour i managed to wiggle the pins into place and now her camera works again. I must admit i did not think i was going to be able to fix that, and having done so is oddly one of the top highlights of the trip, possibly even of the year.

On Sunday Pam and a number of friends went to Pilsen to have a Thanksgiving dinner with another American teacher living there. She invited me along and i accepted. The woman in Pilsen, Kristin, cooked a variety of dishes, and since Pam had told her about my eating habits, a number of the dishes were vegan.
Years ago i started having issues with Thanksgiving - i've never really had the traditionally American upbringing in this regards, but something special/different has happened for most of them. Some were quite good, like the first i spent in the States, in my brother's apartment, eating his first attempt at Spaghetti alla Carbonara (i loved it). Others were wierd, like the last i spent in Rome with my mother (where was my father again?) or the time my brother and i helped my mother move.
Lately they had just been getting real sad, but the past couple years have seen a turnaround.
2 years ago i travelled to Cambodia and spent Thanksgiving eating rice and vegetables in some village. Last year i was in Rome and ate turkey with Maudi, an old friend from high school (yes, turkey - it was that kind of situation). This year i stumbled into a vegan dinner in Pilsen, Czech Republic, including vegan stuffing and vegan apple pie, and local moonshine. This was not the kind of dinner i expected, and was a great, wonderful time.

Perhaps next year i will even be able to again spend this holiday in the States.

One of the main reasons i travel is to spend some time alone - truely alone, when even the words are unfamiliar. But everywhere i go is someone i know. Along with meeting Pam on this trip i have also met someone whose best friend runs a business (along with Mark's brother) in Ann Arbor, and another fellow from Canton, MI. Even Cambodia held people i knew.

Perhaps the world is telling me i am not alone; i wonder what friend i will meet when i go to Rwanda.

Work.

I am supposed to be at work in 4.5 hours for some hardware repair on a major server. The rest of the day i get to interview people for a web programming position. Of the applicants we will be interviewing, 66% have at least one Masters degree; i am a collidge dropout.

Today at work i was talking with a coworker and an instructor when the instructor - in reference to the semester's beginning - asked us, "are you guys all fired up?" I responded, "FIRED?!?!?" as if i had only heard certain words. My coworker was kind enough to laugh and say to me, "you walk on water up there, you would be the last to get fired - the rest of us would be gone and you'd still be working there." I hope he knows how deep the "Thank you" i said was meant to be.

Still, a degree or three would be in order. Maybe i can lease one of my brother's.

CJRB P-III: Enter the Speech

Seeing my family is like watching good movies. These folks are sequels, coming out every few months, always a pleasure for some reason or other, varying in sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways, you can usually criticize the Director on two or four or six points. On occassion there's even a good plot twist or two. And in general great dialogue (this episode's was truly magnificent (i agree with Dana)) and decent enough acting.

Perhaps those sentences are only really endearing if you know how much i enjoy movies.

Teething

My wisdom teeth have started to grow again, and with this comes the pain of breaking skin, twisting teeth, and intense pressure on my jaw and neck. I've been considering getting them removed, but that would require going to the dentist, and - more importantly - since my niece is teething right now, i figure i'm really relating to her by feeling the pain.

Something you call love, but confess...

Many years ago, after my pair of steel toe Corcoran Field Boot II had become so worn as to be unwearable, i tried to buy a new pair. Looked in catalogs, no luck. Looked online, no luck. Called the company, no luck. Called various retailers - please! check you stock again! - no luck. They had the boots, but not in steel toe. The company confirmed that they stopped making them in steel toe.

Enter Rick Barter, a person i know only through online e-mails - through posts to the OpenBSD misc@ mailing list - and who sends mail through Kentucky.
Happens to be looking at my website, at this page, which has some zany personal notes on boots.
Happens to note the boot links on that page are broken.
Happens to e-mail me a note about that.
Happens to be that i pay attention.

Happens to be that while i'm looking up the new links for those products, i find that those field boots again come i steel toe.

My favourite boot is now on its way to me.


It's more than a fascination, it's more than a novel expression, it's more than a wannabe desire, it's definitely more than a fashion statement. It's a story; it's my story, complete with all the melodrama that entails.

I spent the first few years of my life in Somalia. Yeah, that Somalia. My mother was pretty green at the time; Peru was one thing, but for a young white US country girl, Somalia was just otherworldly. And though it's a testament to her stength that she eventually adjusted so well, at the time there were many things that she took very seriously, like always wearing at least slippers outside, always cleaning your hands, always watching what you eat, etc, etc.

Back to that slippers bit. When i was 25 i couldn't remember my feet ever touching grass. But i could remember wearing boots at the beach. I also realised a certain paranoia of land mines that i gained in El Salvador. I also started to really realise that i was living in the U.S.A., and everything that meant (e.g. - hey! if you walk through any random forest, you do not risk stepping on mines!). And i started to realise that i wore boots all the time - during winter and summer, to weddings, while biking, running, etc - i always had my feet covered, just like my momma taught me so long ago.

I've branched off from boots since then, though they are still my mainstay footwear. I've walked barefoot through the arb, through downtown, even at home. I wear sandals and other Lesser Footwear.

But more importantly, i recognize boots as symbolic of a piece of me - an indicator of part of my history, of part of what's made me who i am, of what's given me my skills. To see my favourite boot back in my favourite form; i am reunited with a very, very old friend.

My favourite part was when she fed me

My brother and sister-in-law must tell my niece about me all the time, because she even knew i was vegan, feeding me only pieces of melon and soy patty. Her mumbling phrases is cool, her walking is great, her turning off the tv is wonderful, but her using the little fork to stick little pieces of food and put them in my mouth was the best. She chose to give up her own nourishment in order to feed me - is this not the beginnings of compassion? Surely Avalokiteshvara watches over her.

Oceans

When i was younger i lived close to the Pacific Ocean, in areas where the ocean floor dropped off quickly and tides and currents were erratic and deadly. We went to the beach quite often, and i enjoyed playing in the sand and the surf (i owe my lack of fear of water to my mother, but that's another story). I had heard many tales of other people's children that had gotten pulled under by the tide and swept out to sea, never seen again, or of people who had hit their head on the reef and drowned, but never thought it would happen to me; perhaps it seemed the most ridiculous thing to die of in the places i was living.

One afternoon we were at the beach in El Salvador, i must have been around 11. I was walking by myself with my feet just in the water, when a large wave came and toppled me over, pulled me into the ocean, and pushed me down. I blacked out for a bit, and when i came to i was under water and my head hurt a lot. Luckily the current was pushing me upwards at that moment, i had only hit my head on the sand, and i wasn't out that long as i still had air in my lungs. I reached the surface and swam back towards the beach in a half-dazed, half-awake state. My head wasn't too badly bruised and no one found out about the incident. I remember it as the day i learned that the tide is your friend for only so long.

It took me a few more years to realise that also applied to people.

Bike Helmet

I have a couple stickers on my bike helmet other than the shiny ones that keep me alive. One of these is security related and the other is the sticker off the Battle Royale dvd i received today.

Our supervisor gave us gift certificates to Barnes & Noble for the holidays, and as with most actions that my supervisor takes, this cert is overly time consuming - i'm not sure what to buy because B&N doesn't offer what i want, like Battle Royale. Since i couldn't find it in B&N i decided to buy it at ebay, and i got Battle Royale I & II for $28 including shipping.

My brother told me about Battle Royale a while ago, and since then i've seen a variety of Takeshi Kitano flicks - Sonatine, Brother, Zatoishi, Taboo - but Battle Royale was a little more difficult to come by (ok, Liberty St Video probably has it but i haven't been in there for years, it's way too close to where i live). I've especially wanted to see it after reading some reviews about it, such as this one.

It's a good movie, not Unforgiven good but Dawn of the Dead good, which in its own way is a goodness i respect a whole lot more than a Shine goodness. I enjoy movies that can be readily dismissed as "horror" or "action" without realising the social commentary underlying the premise (that's not to say that one dimensional films like Napolean Dynamite or Saved can't also be good, but they won't have the depth of Night of the Living Dead, and that's a bad thing because then they work iff the viewer has an indepth understanding of the culture surrounding the story; in a similar manner i doubt the Simpsons or Andres Serrano will be widely understandable past our own cultures).

Spielberg can keep his in-your face messages as depicted through Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan, sometimes an audience needs the juxtaposition created by the distance between the story and the message - it is as important as chiaroscuro in painting or contrapposto in sculpture.

And if i continue down that line of thought, maybe, just maybe i'll learn to appreciate musicals as well.

Watch it.

I must have the smallest wrists ever. I needed a total of 4 links removed from my new watch. These women at a jewelry store at the mall did it for free - is that normal, or was i supposed to tip them? I usually tip pretty good, the result of dating waitresses, but only when i know i'm supposed to.

I had been admiring my father's watch while i was in Peru for Christmas, and he offered it to me. I couldn't take his watch, so i decided i would buy one, though i haven't owned one since the 80's. After much searching i found the Seiko SKH-202, a kinetic titanium quartz watch in dark grey and golden highlights.

It doesn't do anything fancy, like tell me my heartbeat, or the altitude i'm at, or which direction is north, but it keeps time and the day's number, is 100m water resistant, and should never need a new battery, or wound, so long as i wear it regularly.

It even says 'sport' on it, meaning i can wear it while biking.

Driving in Peru

My father paid $33 for 6.7 gallons of gas, roughly $4.90/gallon.

Driving here is worse than Rome, which is worse than Boston, which is worse than New York. About 5% of the vehicles here don't use their lights at night. Lanes and lights are suggestions. There are three methods of letting people know they are about to hit you: flashing your lights, creating sound (horn or other variet of squeals, yelps, twirly noises), and swerving in their direction. There aren't many bikes or motos, not like Rome or Phnom Penh or Amsterdam. Some parts of town have covered trikes, like the tuk-tuks in Bangkok, but they are forbidden from travelling in other parts. For the most part people go in the right direction down the road, not like Cambodia. The roads are severely torn up in spots, watch out for people swerving to avoid those. Buses are plentiful, all sizes, and apparently random (read the sign in front, and know your map). Most of the cars are sedan or smaller, not as small as Rome, some pickup trucks and fewer SUV's. There are many, many taxis on the roads, more than anywhere i've seen.

Vacation Time

Supposedly i've been on vacation since Wednesday, yet i've logged almost as many work hours as i have vacation hours. I don't mind - i enjoy my work and it keeps my mind someplace where i feel i'm doing something halfway worthwhile.

In the hours that i don't work, i get to read. Tonight i also visited and ate with my abuelita at her house, along with my father and uncle. We then went over to see one of my aunt's - she recently opened an internet shop in her garage, a nice little place with 10 computers set up for use. In 6 hours my mother arrives in town and in around 12 we head for Arequipa, and, eventually, the world's second deepest canyon and then the deepest canyon, if i can convince them of it. The air at 4000m; i'm looking forward to it.

Work

My mother picked me up from the airport and one of the first stops i had to make was the office. Had to have her drive me there as i let my license expire and i didn't have the clothing for biking in the cold.

Yes i go to work immediately after i get back, my grandfather would be proud. Didn't have to - it was Friday after Thanksgiving and no one else was at work. Still it was good to go back.

My main reason for going was to reset a couple secondary servers, which took but a couple minutes. Checked my (physical) mail while i was there - had two smallish packages in my mailbox and a box on my desk. The smallish packages held a shirt each and the box was a Canon A75 digital camera (the A75 is the newer version of the A70 which is the lower end version of the A80 i own and love), all won via promos from APC.

The last time i won anything was also around my birthday, back in 1992. I wasn't going to buy a raffle ticket, but a friend of mine was quite insistent. The girl i was dating at the time was involved in the drawing and by complete chance, i'm sure, i happened to win the grand prize: a large basket full of american chocolates and other candies. That prize was just as useless to me as the camera and shirts - it was the beginning of the wrestling season and i had to lose a couple pounds. I gave the candies away to all my friends, as if i was so overwhelmed with joy at winning that i had to share. I only wrestled for two matches that year thanks to Tony Kikka (sp?) - during a training exercise with him something in my foot went POP and i was on crutches the rest of the season.

I'm giving the A75 to my father. He's the wealthiest person in our family but has no camera.

Part II

It had been a while since i pissed off my mom, so i got a new tattoo today. If you have x-ray vision, you can see it here. It's opposite the other and (partially) reflects a different culture i was exposed to as a youth. Two or three more cultures to go before i get my own going on.

First Post

My brother asked me to set up a blog so that he doesn't have to call me any more.

This is it.